The occasion was a central European conference on the subversive disinformation campaigns of Putin’s Russia (which, incidentally, are real, subtle, and potentially effective). The speaker was an American warning that the central European democracies were in imminent danger of succumbing to the lures of authoritarian populism, even of abandoning democracy itself, under this influence. He cited the probable election of the media billionaire Andrej Babis as prime minister in Czech elections as one sign of this democratic collapse.
A heavy sigh came from a European participant, standing next to me: ‘Why do Americans exaggerate so? Babis may be a sleazy operator with a communist past, but he’s been the Czech finance minister for the last three years and the economy did pretty well. He’s getting votes because he opposes the EU proposal to foist migrants on the Czech Republic. And he’s so mired in legal difficulties over fraud and corruption that he may not be able to form a government even if he wins the election.
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